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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Labour should stand and fight

The talk is that Labour is set to piss on David Davis's bonfire and emulate the Lib Dems by refusing to run a candidate in the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election. This would be a serious missed opportunity for two reasons.

Firstly, it presents a chance for Gordon and the party to take a stand on a serious issue of principle with very little political risk attached. The attitude should be: "If David Davis wants a debate about terrorism, let him have one."

The worst than can happen is the part will lose the by-election - which everyone expects it to anyway - but if it's true that Labour is closer to public opinion on this issue than the Tories, they might actually do much better than anticipated.

But there is a deeper, more devious reason why Labour should play along with Davis's game for now - because it is not in fact in Gordon Brown's political interests for the former Shadow Home Secretary's bonfire to be pissed on.

In fact, if anything the Prime Minister should be busily pouring petrol on the flames. The more publicity that Davis's by-election stunt attracts, the more awkward it will make it for David Cameron

I'd even go so far as to say it's a win-win situation for Brown. Either Davis does worse than expected, which will puncture the Tory revival, or he returns to the Commons with a thumping majority to make more mischief for Dave.

It is clear to me from DC's coments about the "permanent" appointment of Dominic Grieve that he does not intend to bring Davis back into the Shadow Cabinet, which is even better news for Labour.

Not only has the Tory frontbench now lost its star performer, but he is set to return as a Michael Heseltine-type figure on the backbenches. Gordon will be a happier man tonight.

Agree Labour should fight it - I'd go one step further. Brown should break with convention and go to Yorkshire for a town hall debate with Davis on the issue. Whatever the outcome, it would show Brown regards Davis as a serious politician of substance - and leave Cameron looking lightwieght in comparison. The Tories will then have two years torn between the Boy King or the Prince across the Humber

Brilliant post. I was starting to think that every Labour poster had gone as mad as the leadership on this issue of fighting Davis!!!

They have nothing to lose and an awful lot to gain by fighting him - not least the fact that if they can win, or even seriously cut his majority, it will give them democratic legitimacy and make it much harder for the Lords to block them come the autumn.

But as post no. 3 noted, Brown will probably screw it up out of sheer ineptitude anyway.

You expect Gordon to actually fight an election if he doesn't need to? that would be totally out of character. You want Kelvin MacKenzie whose attitudes make Alf Garnet look reasonable to represent Labour's point of view? I don't believe it!

"He saw politics very much like Trollope, as the interplay of personalities seeking preferment, rather than, like me, as a conflict of principles and programmes about social and economic change."

Denis Healey, writing about Roy Jenkins in "The Time of My Life."

"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with a series of far-fetched resolutions, and these are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code. And you go through the years sticking to that, outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'll tell you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's homes and with people's services."

Neil Kinnock, Bournemouth 1985

"But the most eloquent message concerns the Blair government. It must be right at all times. Above all, the integrity of the leader can never be challenged. He never did hype up intelligence. He didn't take Britain to war on any other than the stated terms. Any suggestion of half-truth, or disguised intention, or concealed Bushite promises is the most disgraceful imaginable charge that deserves a state response that knows no limit.

"That's how a sideshow came to take over national life. Now it seems to have taken a wretched, guiltless man's life with it. Such is the dynamic that can be unleashed by a leader who believes his own reputation to be the core value his country must defend."

Hugo Young, on the death of Dr David Kelly, 2003

"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life."